


A Pillar of Fire by Night

by Dancains



Category: The Lighthouse (2019)
Genre: Age Difference, Drunk Sex, M/M, One Shot, Some internalized homophobia as befitting the 1890s, Surprisingly no violence or gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-04 23:10:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancains/pseuds/Dancains
Summary: "Aye, Sir," slithered wanton from his lips, even if they had left such formalities long, long behind.





	A Pillar of Fire by Night

**Author's Note:**

> I just saw the movie last night and felt the need to quickly word-vomit something about it. In a perfect world this piece would be much more fittingly bizarre.

_The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,_  
_And on its outer point, some miles away,_  
_The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,_  
_A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day. _

_Even at this distance I can see the tides,_  
_Upheaving, break unheard along its base,_  
_A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides_  
_In the white lip and tremor of the face. _

_And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,_  
_Through the deep purple of the twilight air,_  
_Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light_  
_With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!_  


_-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

The storm was howling something fierce outside, mean and spitting and violent, and, despite his better judgment, Tommy buried his face deeper into Wake's shoulder, as they swayed to and fro like the timbers of the light-keeper's house creaking in the wind. Wake's voice, though far from anything that could've been called beautiful, was a warm comfort, like the gin that sat heavy in his belly, and it made Tommy want to grip tighter in the back of the man's sweat-stained shirt, as if to pull himself closer to the sound.

It was some old sea-dog's shanty, as far as Tommy could tell, drunk as he was. Perhaps Wake's stories hadn't been horse-shit after all, his tall tales spun like the yarn he would knit with in the evenings, filled with scurvy and brine and no doubt embellished more with every re-telling. Even if they were, Tommy felt as if he had gotten Wake all wrong--he was just a lonely old man, made crude and rough by his solitude.

Wake's singing ceased, and thunder rumbled somewhere over the frothing gray sea. They pulled apart, slightly, like tendons of sinewy meat gently being sliced into two by a butcher's knife. 

By all rights, Wake's mouth should have tasted foul, like stale tobacco and rotting teeth, like the rancid water from the cistern, but all Tommy could taste was the gin that coated his own tongue. It was a meeting of hair more than a meeting of lips, anyhow, 'cause of the over-grown bristles of both of their whiskers. Still, he gave himself over to the act, working his tongue between chapped lips. Wake's gnarled hands went flat to his chest. _Fuck._ What in the hell were they doing?

He couldn't meet Wake's gaze, but the elder keeper took him by the chin. "Look at me, lad. Ephraim. Don't toy with an old sea captain. I don't want to hear you in the morn...saying I forced ye. Spittin' all sorts of falsehoods."

Tommy held silent.

"Truth be told," Wake continued, in his sharp New-England sting, a fervor in his gray eyes, "it's been too long since I've had any a body in me grasp..." His hands made his way to the hard muscle of Tommy's belly. Tommy didn't stop him.

In only a day or two he'd be back to shore, with his four weeks of pay heavy in his pocket and the choice of any whore that the dockside could offer him. But a whore couldn't put a cock in him, could she?

Wake had brought a smear of grease from the kitchen, along with another bottle of gin, as they stumbled up the stairs to the room with the cots. Tommy took another swig. The effect of it was nearly null, compared to his first taste of the night--which had hit him like a dash of lightning he had once seen strike a white oak, leaving a gash of burning fire down the tree's trunk. Sloppily, he arranged himself on hands and knees across Wake's cot, where the mattress was thicker, and the old man obliged him that.

Wake sidled up behind him, making the cot groan under their weight, and reached around to unbutton Tommy's trousers. "I remember my first time being buggered," Wake drawled, as always unable to keep his mouth shut. "When I was just a ship's boy. And I weren't no handsome looking thing like you, neither. But the men knew a tight, warm hole when they saw it." It was impossible to picture him then, as anything other than sun-bleached and grizzled.

Tommy heard a wet sound, perhaps Wake slathering his peg with grease. His trousers and long-johns down, he felt the coolness of the room, a relief when the rest of him was fever-hot. It should have been a shock that the old man could even bring himself to full mast, even more so with the drink in him, but Tommy felt the hard poke of something along the cleft of his ass, and bony hands spread him open. His thoughts were a flurry. He weren't no damned Mary-Anne, no _invert_\--Thomas Howard was a_ man_\--but the warm touch of another was more intoxicating than drink, and he would leave this sin on the island, like he left all the rest.

"Try me best to be," Wake grunted, "gentle with ye, lad." 

Bent small and vulnerable on his elbows and his knees, Tommy clenched his teeth into the mattress as he was cleaved clean open. The pain felt good, it was what he deserved. In the distance, the lighthouse blared. Wake poured himself over Tommy's back, lithe but solid all the same. For a moment they didn't move, just breathed heavy into the air. Loosened by gin, his body relaxed as best it could. Wake began fucking him like a mangy, mindless dog. Fucking him with the vigor of a man half his years.

It was filthy, vile, for Tommy to let a man like this take him. He pushed back into it, grunting and gritting his teeth, and worked a hand under himself to tend to his own half-hardness, just as he tended to the roaring, fuming coal fire each day. The old man felt no shame in groaning and gasping and swearing with every frantic thrust. 

"That's it, lad. That's it. Jesus _fucking_ Christ. _Jesus..Mary...and Joseph._"

Some sickened part of him wanted Wake to call him by his Christian name. His real one. For the word to curdle sweetly into his ear. Just as the intrusion into his body began to feel some kind of blissfulness, like honey dripping down his throat, Wake slowed and withdrew. 

"Turn over for me, boy," desperation cracked in Wake's voice, "please."

Feeling empty and wanting, Tommy moved his tired limbs, obeying. "Aye, Sir," slithered wanton from his lips, even if they had left such formalities long, long behind. Like this, somehow, he felt more like a whore. Like someone who wanted it. Wake's eyes were pearls of fire, his crooked mouth grinning under the scraggle of his beard. He looked as some fierce denizen of the deep, no doubt set upon dragging Tommy under.

He didn't want to see Wake's graying body, where his ribs stuck out hideous and concave, but his hand went to the man's sternum, where his shirt hung open, unable to stop himself from tracing the faded tattoo lines of a ship at sea. He had no such decoration upon his own skin, but he could imagine the jab of the needle, its phantom sensation.

Wake bent his legs, sinewy arms wrapping under his knees, pressing them towards Tommy's chest, where his insides were writhing, palpitating. "How a pretty thing like you, found himself on my rock...confounds the very mind." Wake shoved into him. The gin bottle rattled on the floor, rolling on its side and bleeding a clear puddle below them.

Tommy wrapped a hand about himself, his eyes shut tight, that unfathomable fullness burning inside him. When he spilled his seed, it felt like glory. Like whatever blazed white and beautiful and mighty at the top of the island's light.


End file.
